1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a program development support system and particularly relates to a program development support system to generate a program in execution format from a specification being input.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A conventional program development support system comprises a specification preparation means to prepare a specification file on a terminal using data input with a terminal editor, a specification transmission means to transmit the specification file on the terminal to another specification file on the host, a source generation means to generate a source file from the specification file on the host, a compilation means to compile the source file to generate an object file and a link means which receives the object file and generates an execution format file.
The conventional program development support system as described above enables generation of an executable program only if the user prepares a specification. However, there is difficulty in debugging in case a failure is found in the program execution test. Though the message to locate the failure is given for the source program, the debugging must be done for the specification. Since the correspondence between the specification and the source program is not given in the conventional system, the user cannot debug the specification by referring to the source program.
Certainly, the line numbers for the source program upon generation can be transmitted to the terminal in order for reference to the source program during debugging in such a program development support system, but if the line number data of the source program are sent to the terminal as they are, they would require a long time for transmission due to their large amount, which prolongs the time for program development.